Egypt's funded startups: where they are now
Owning the trucks is what broke distribution; a lender made the one published profit
Every startup based in Egypt, or with Egypt as its main market, that raised a single round of — or more in —. Those years are when the money came in, not when companies failed: outcomes are followed up to —, which is why MNT-Halan's October 2026 listing and Swvl's 2026 delisting warning are counted. Egypt's big rounds went to credit, payments and consumer apps. The number that sell something cheaper than what their customers already pay is —: with grid power nearly everywhere and bread and fuel subsidised, the kerosene-style penalty that solar removes in Kenya is largely missing. The rule that does hold is the other half. Of the — price takers, — failed or are distressed. Of the — others, —.
Outcome by sector
Payments, lending and consumer apps hold up; distribution and transport are where the losses are. Each chip is one company; failures are in red. Hover a chip for what happened.
Owning the trucks is what broke distribution here
Of the — price takers that owned their own trucks and warehouses, — are still operating on their own. Capiter grew to hundreds of trucks and thousands of staff in two years and was liquidated; MaxAB merged into Kenya's Wasoko. Of the — price takers that left the trucks and stock to others, as marketplaces matching shops with wholesalers or shippers with truck owners, — are still running, though none has published a profit. Swvl is the exception: it owned no buses, but spent its listing money expanding across three continents and then had to sell or close almost everything it bought. Being a price taker is survivable when the costs are light; it is fatal when the margin has to pay for a fleet.
Who makes money and who loses it, by sector
Profitable means a publicly reported profit with figures, from a company that is otherwise healthy. Operating means still running, with no published profit. Each chip is one company.
Winning and losing sectors
Bars to the left are companies that failed or are distressed; bars to the right are still operating, with profitable ones in the accent color. Sectors are ordered from most net winners to most net losers. Hover a bar for names.
Every company by name
What the winners have that the losers don't
How many companies in each group have each trait. Darker cells mean more of the group has it.
The terms, in plain words.
- Spend displacement: the product costs less than what the same customers already pay for the same need, so they redirect money instead of finding new money. This is the poverty premium/penalty being removed. None of the Egyptian companies here does this outright; several save customers something (Partial), such as a wage advance instead of an informal loan.
- Price taker: a company with no pricing power, which has to accept the price that cheaper rivals, often informal traders, have already set.
- Essential need: demand that holds up when money is tight (food, energy, transport, health, moving money). Economists call it inelastic demand.
- Asset-heavy: high capital intensity; the company owns fleets, warehouses, labs, power plants or farms.
- Asset-backed debt: borrowing secured on the thing sold or on the stream of customer payments, through repossession rights, lockable devices or by selling bundles of loans to investors.
- Recurring payments: customers pay daily, weekly or monthly, or on every transaction, rather than once, which makes revenue predictable.
- Policy dependence: the business only works while a subsidy, licence, regulation or government approval is in place, or once one arrives.
Reading the map. Every failed or distressed company is a price taker, and none of them collects recurring payments. Every company that is not a price taker is still operating; in Egypt that mostly means lenders, payment companies and consumer apps for the middle class. The one company with published profits, MNT-Halan, is also the only one funding itself on its own loans, the same asset-backed debt that marks Kenya's winners, here secured on loan repayments rather than on solar kits or motorbikes. The many operating companies with no published profit have survived largely by raising again: most of them closed new rounds between 2024 and 2026.
Why they failed or stalled
Each company's main cause, and the event that finally tipped it over. The cause is what made the business fragile; the trigger is what ended it. Egypt has the fewest outright failures of the three countries so far. All three companies here were price takers, and two of the three owned the assets they ran on, or bought them with listing money.
Who is making money
Only healthy companies that have published profit figures. Swvl reported a small 2025 profit, helped by one-off gains, but after losing almost all its value it is counted as distressed. Vezeeta, Money Fellows and Lucky say they are profitable but publish no figures, so they are counted as operating.
What the one profitable company shows.
- The lender, not the app, makes the money. MNT-Halan lends through a large physical network of branches and agents as well as its app, to traders and households that banks do not serve.
- Selling loans funds the growth. It packages its loans and sells them to investors for cash upfront, and by 2026 those sales earned it more than interest did. This is the Egyptian version of d.light selling its solar receivables in Kenya.
- Profit moves with interest rates. Its profit fell when Egypt's central bank raised rates in 2024, because its bank funding repriced faster than its fixed-rate loans, and recovered in 2025.
- Recovery runs through the courts. Many loans are backed by signed promissory notes rather than an asset it can seize, so unpaid loans become court cases. Credit risk is managed, not removed.
All companies
Click a column to sort. The largest round is the biggest single round announced in the window.
Method and limits
Who is in. Startups headquartered in Egypt, or with Egypt as their main market, that announced one round of — or more (equity or debt) in —. The main-market rule keeps Swvl, which moved its headquarters to Dubai, and Dopay, which works from Abu Dhabi. The window covers when the money was raised; outcomes are followed to the present. It stops where it does so that every company has had at least three years to show how it turned out. Rounds and outcomes come from press reports, linked per company in the cards.
How each company is coded.
- Poverty premium/penalty: the extra that poor households and small businesses pay for the same thing, such as kerosene instead of grid power, borrowing from an informal lender, or handling wages in cash. C.K. Prahalad called it the poverty penalty. Yes when the product removes it, costing less than what the same customers already spend on the same need. Partial when it saves something real but sells at market price. No when it must match a price already set by low-cost informal operators. n/a when the customer is a business or a middle-class household, or the product replaces no existing spend.
- Asset intensity: High when the company owns fleets, warehouses, dark stores or factories; Medium when it carries inventory, vehicles or a loan book; Low when it is mostly software and people.
- Outcome: Operating, Distressed (merged on weak terms, or collapsed in value after listing), or Failed (shut, administration or liquidation), as of the date shown.
- Profitable: published profit figures from a company that is otherwise healthy. A company's statement that it is profitable, without figures, is not enough.
Left out. Tabby, Opontia, Tribal Credit, Anghami, Classera and ArabyAds (headquartered and mostly operating in the Gulf, Lebanon or the US); Fawry (listed in 2019, not a startup); valU (a subsidiary of EFG Hermes); OneOrder (its round in the window was below the threshold; its larger round came in 2024).
Limits. The sample is small, so read the pattern as strong evidence, not proof. MaxAB is counted here and Wasoko in Kenya; after their merger they are one company appearing in both. Many companies here raised again between 2024 and 2026, which keeps them operating but says nothing about returns, and several have little public data and are marked so. MaxAB is counted at its $40m 2021 round; some lists show a larger figure that includes a later extension. Swvl's largest round before its listing is used, not the listing proceeds. The coding is my own judgment and is open to challenge row by row.
About this research. This study is my own independent work. I did it because billions have gone into African startups, and the record of what that money built is thin. Comments, corrections and conversations are welcome: Peter Muiga, pm@curatedventures.africa.
Curated Ventures is not a fund; it's where I publish my thinking as I move into venture investing. I am open to conversations about the research, and about working together.
Share your thoughts or reach me at pm@curatedventures.africa · Peter Muiga